4 Clever Social Media Strategies for Lead Generation

Before we address how useful social media is, let’s first define lead generation as a strategy. When you think of the term “lead generation”, what comes to your mind? Is it the ability to draw in more potential customers? Or is it the way to get a higher ranking on search engines?

Well, to sum it up, lead generation is everything and more. In simple terms, leads are simply people who’ve expressed interest in your product or service and whose information you’ll forward to the relevant sales and marketing departments, who’ll try to engage them with content marketing.

There are countless lead generation tools out there, but social media is undoubtedly one of the best ones. When we talk about social media as a lead generation tool, many marketers base their experience on a single Facebook ad campaign gone wrong. However, with the way social media has incorporated itself into our lives, it’s difficult to ignore its presence.

Social media gives you the opportunity to focus on highly qualified leads through better targeting. So, without further ado, here are four ways you can generate leads through social media:

Run Contests

Have you ever participated in a social media contest? What made you take part?

The prize.

The reward for any contest needs to be valuable to ensure competitors have the desire to win. Not just that, though. The prize should be worthy enough for the people who have the best chance of becoming your customers.

If the prize isn’t worth the effort people will put into the contest, nobody’s going to participate. On the other hand, if the value of the award is commonly known, sure, people enter, but they won’t turn into qualified leads.

Thus, your target audience, in this case, should be people who are genuinely interested in your product, company or content. That’s why your prize shouldn’t just be something anyone will enjoy – like a trip – but it should be something that appeals to your brand’s potential customers.

An example of a great social media contest is IKEA’s dorm room sweepstakes last year. It uses a landing page that’ll help you get additional details about potential leads and ensures the people who are entering, i.e., students are the brand’s target audience.

Go Live

Visual content is fantastic; in fact, posts with videos attract 3X more links than text-only posts. Visual content that gives your audience a chance to interact with you? Even better.

Google+ hangouts, live videos on social media, and webinars are all great ways to generate leads through social media.

You can choose to present the video as gated content where users have to sign up in advance through their contact details. You can also make the video available to a broad audience and generate leads through offers or contests during the video or encourage interaction by offering a reward to whoever participates.

Many marketers make the mistake of forgetting about the live video once it ends. Don’t do that. Follow up with everyone who leaves a comment and encourage them to reach out to you if they have any other questions.

Live videos are a simple tactic that has the potential to generate innumerable leads. You’ll attract a smaller audience if your videos are specific to a niche, but those leads are more likely to turn into customers.

Use Paid Advertising

Social networks’ algorithms have changed and advertising on platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, is as game-changing as ever. Updates to the advertising algorithm ensure that users now see content that’s more targeted to their interests and the chances of them seeing ads for something they’re not interested in at all are extremely low.

So, what does this mean for you? Well, your organic now need to be promoted to ensure they reach your desired audience. Every social media platform offers you to select the audience you want to target according to their demographic criteria, such as age, gender, location, etc.

Focus on developing your ideal customer profile (ICP) to ensure you’re not just wasting your resources on targeting an audience that won’t be interested in what you’re offering.

Your promoted content should also be accompanied by a strong call-to-action to encourage conversions. For instance, you can ask followers to download a free PDF or sign up with their details. If social media marketing seems like a tough ordeal, you can always recruit one of the top social media marketing agencies to help you out.

Share Gated Content

So, what’s gated content? Well, gated content is content that requires potential customers to enter information before they can get access to it. Sharing links to gated content is an effective way to generate leads from social media platforms.

Gated content works brilliantly to pique your audience’s interests and lure them in as potential customers. Many brands offer gated content for lead generation, but they also do so because they realize the content they’re offering shouldn’t be offered for free.

To develop effective gated content, you need first to determine what your objective. Do you want to generate leads or build brand awareness? You should, also, conduct research to check whether the gated content you’re planning to offer is currently being offered for free by your competitors.

For example, Social Media Examiner offers an exclusive report for free to everyone who signs up with their details on their website.

Offer Discount Codes

Discount codes and flash deals are excellent ways to stimulate demand for your offerings and creating brand awareness. By incorporating a time constraint and a compelling call-to-action, you ensure that potential customers have a sense of urgency when responding to your campaign.

In the example below, Bonobos creates urgency by telling visitors they only have a day to avail the 20 percent discount on all golf products. This promotion is an excellent example of offering an exclusive discount in a limited timeframe.

Whichever strategy you eventually go for needs to fall in line with your marketing objectives and the interests and persona of your audience. Before diving into something, you must have it planned from A-Z. Once you find something that clicks, use your social media platforms turn your leads to deals!

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